Have you ever seen a beautifully built or restored classic for sale with scant few miles on the clock and wondered to yourself: “How could anyone put so much time and effort into a car and never drive it?” We know where it comes from; blood, sweat, tears, time, and money are all shed in varying doses on every project, and when it’s finally the car you’ve always wanted it’s hard to subject it to the abuses and wear and tear of the open road. But we’re here to tell ya, you’re missing out.

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We’ll admit though, we allowed ourselves to fall into the same trap; since Project X’s latest and greatest incarnation was finished up by General Motors special projects division in 2008, we’ve done little more than putt around town in it. We allowed it to sit upon a shelf and become little more than a prized heirloom and static symbol of PHR’s great past exploits than the constant source of adventure it had always been. It was a damn shame too; that’s not what X was ever about.

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What we needed was something to jostle us out of our complacency and protectiveness, and we found it in the form of a challenge issued by our friend Christopher Sondles of Woody’s Hot Rodz. Sondles has conspired with Real Deal Steel to bring back fresh steel ’55-57 Chevy hardtops, sedans, and convertibles and decided to organize a special Tri-Five Cruise from his shop in Bright, Indiana, to the Shades of the Past show in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to mark the occasion. His goal? Have Project X lead the cruise.

4/32We arrived on the last day of the Nats and enjoyed the finals for Top Fuel and Fuel Funny Car (Antron Brown, 3.819 at 322.65 and Mike Neff, 4.060 at 313.66 respectively) but honestly it was the Cacklefest for vintage dragsters we enjoyed the most. Here’s ’70s AA/FD superstar John Wiebe getting a push from a bitchin ’32 Ford shop truck.

We were tempted, but tentative. News spreads around here, and a few days later we received an email from Jerry Dixey, the pied piper of the 2011 AMSOIL/STREET RODDER Road Tour, that suggested we join up with a leg of the Road Tour in Indianapolis, then merge with Sondles and commence our own Popular Hot Rodding/Real Deal Steel Tri-Five Cruise sponsored by Woody’s Hot Rodz—as it had come to be called. The annual Road Tour is one of the longest and best hot rod-centric road trips out there; Dixey covers 25,000 miles in a fresh SR project car over the course of the summer, dropping in at shows, shops, and interesting roadside venues. The combination was just too much to resist, so we decided it was high time to clear out the carbon and see a bit of the USA in our Chevrolet.